Purple, like royalty
by The Slice
Summary: Inhaling deeply, Endymion follows the path of her finger down, down, down, and shudders when it skates over the top of his hand. She turns her face up to him, somber and bright and alive...EndymionSaturn...Crystal Millennium


**Title: **Purple, like royalty  
**Fandom: **Sailor Moon  
**Disclaimer: **Please don't make me hit you, mate.  
**Summary: **_Inhaling deeply, Endymion follows the path of her finger, down, down, down, and shudders when it skates over the top of his hand. She turns her face up to him, somber and bright and alive.  
_**Notes: **Written because smmonthly had a prompt, PURPLE, which correlated with my own prompt (among a list i thought up one night), being, ENDYMION/HOTARU - PURPLE, LIKE ROYALTY - CM, which means that this is, actually, Endymion/Saturn het!fic, with a little smut thrown in, Crystal Millennium era. 1,935 words. ConCrit welcome:

**Purple, like royalty.**

There are certain things that Endymion detests about being King: He hates it when people gaze at him in awe or wonder, when people smite him merely for holding power; he hates not being able to walk into a lazy café and buy a mocha latte, or sit beneath a tree and read a book.

And one of the things he hates, most of all, is the clothing.

Which is why, on his third day at Saturn's castle, he declines his stately, suffocating attire of pale and paler violet. Perhaps it looks good in the Palace's crystalline halls, and beside Serenity's shimmering pearl, but here, amongst dark halls and deep, rich purple, he feels like a ghost.

Once upon a time, he reflects, I was just as vibrant as these walls and their tapestries. Once, I was just as strong and alive.

Saturn makes him feel like an old man.

He goes out to Saturn's dark, synthetic garden, where stars are gathered on vines and long, swaying stems, like fairy lights, and glow like a radioactive neon dream. He breathes in deep, the non-scent of space and magic and silence, and misses his Earth.

"My King."

If there is one other thing that makes him feel even older in this spiraling castle, it is the woman that a little girl named Hotaru has grown into. "My Lady Saturn," he says, turning, smiling with gentle charm. "Your gardens are lovely."

"Do not be coy." She smiles back at him, a small no-telling curve of pale, unpainted lips. "I know that you find no joy in it." The silence seems to reverberate off from her, draped in dark cloth and shimmering violet ribbons. Whoever said that silence is golden, he thinks, is wrong. Silence is alabaster skin and violet eyes, and hair like deep space. Her feet make no noise on the garden path.

"A thing can be lovely without being joyful." His words amble, sedately; voice lazy like a summer breeze playing with an ocean's waves. "And a thing can be pleasing without being either."

"Can it?" She asks, somber and quietly attentive.

"Yes." He hesitates. "Though I must admit, I find your gardens none of the three."

It pleases him when she smiles, again, and he sees her dimples. There is still some of a once sickly teenager inside of her, whom Endymion had found a strange, solemn connection with. He is glad to cause her amusement.

"Then what, my King," she queries, voice slanting to playful. "A lie when you said my gardens were lovely?"

"Perhaps a small one." She draws up next to him, reaches out and plucks a star blossom from its stem, tucks it into her hair, behind her ear. He is reminded of Usagi from a time so long ago that he cannot remember the beach's name, and only faintly her wild laughter. A sweep of soft sadness, like Saturn's encompassing silence, falls over him, like a mantle. Softly, "A white one, perhaps."

Slowly, she strokes a slender finger down his pale shirtsleeve. "White like you, my ghostly King?"

Inhaling deeply, Endymion follows the path of her finger, down, down, down, and shudders when it skates over the top of his hand. She turns her face up to him, somber and bright and alive.

"They do not suit you," she says, and leaves.

II

The next morning, when Endymion wakes, he finds clothes laid out for him, the garments in the style of Saturn, sweeping folds of warm cloth tied in key places with trailing, curling ribbons and fat, satiny stitches. He brings the clothes up to his face, inhales, and smells her cool scent lingering.

"Thank you, my Lady Saturn," he proclaims aloud, though there is nothing but silence to hear him, and pulls the dark clothes on gravely.

When he leaves, he does not go to the gardens, but rather he follows the faint echo of music to its source, like a treasure hunt, until he reaches a small ballroom, with a large vid window opened across the length of one wall. On screen he sees a memory of old; a Starlight concert, with Michiru and Haruka as accompaniment.

In the center of the room, her head back and hands tangled in her long, long hair – almost as long as Mistress 9's wealth of raven's black locks, but not quite – stands Saturn's monarch. Endymion steps quietly forward, stopping beside her, and stays silent as the music plays out, shaking him to his bones.

The music is so loud as to be painful, and it grips him tight within its melodies, within Kou's startling voice and within the harmony of guitar and violin, within the dance of piano keys, like the breaking of stars, and he wonders how anything can feel this real and alive and ancient, all at once. Memories swarm him, of roses and bright moonlight, of blonde haired girls and senshi meetings, of laughter and heated arguments, of days at the park or studying for med tests with Ami, of Makoto helping him make an anniversary dinner for his wife of one year, of Haruka threatening his manhood lest he harm their princess.

"I feel old," he murmurs, not realizing that the music has stopped.

"Yes." Startled, Endymion looks to her, with her deep eyes as dark as the violet ribbons holding his clothing together. "A rose," she says, "cannot live by light of the moon alone. It needs sunlight, and fresh air, and spring, lest it fade away."

Endymion scowls, feeling his face move in a way it hasn't in years. It is such a startling development that he almost loses it. Politics have ruled his life for decades, and he has not been able to afford allowing any emotion save calm to etch lines into his face. "You are no sun."

Saturn smiles, and Endymion remembers that she can end the world. "No. And you do not like my gardens."

"No." Abruptly, he changes the subject. "Aren't you ever lonely here?"

She blinks, somewhat startled, and Endymion quashes his petty smugness. He is King, he reminds himself. He is supposed to be above those things. "Of course," she says, her voice drawing him back from himself. "I live in this castle all alone, after all, and only occasionally have visitors." Wistfully, "I miss Small Lady."

Compassion overwhelms Endymion for one shining, startling moment. He misses Small Lady too. "She is young yet," he says, gently. "She will come."

Saturn nods, faintly, her face smooth and solemn. "I will let you in on a secret, my King. Do you wish to hear it?"

_No_.

"Of course, Lady."

Smiling at him like she knows his secrets, his sins, his soul, she says, "Sometimes, the silence gets too loud."

II

She comes to him in what passes as night for the ringed planet below them. It is dark in his chambers, and the white of her skin glows, like she is a phantom come to claim him. In a way, she is.

She does not ask permission, and he does not welcome her into his bed, but nonetheless they meet, hard mouth against hard mouth, beneath the slippery sheets. Gentle pulls on silken bows, and their clothes slip off, easy, pushed to the floor to land, quiet, like the shadows of shadows.

"Do not say my name," he whispers, and feels her nodding against his neck.

They move in ragged, breathless silence, strong bodies supple against each other, her slender legs wrapping around his narrow waist, her hair catching under them so that she hisses in almost-pain. He slides in, deep, quick, teeth rasping against her arched neck, and fucks her hard, feeling her fucking back, nails cleaving into his shoulders.

It is nothing like gentle moonlight, or even the bright sunlight she taunted him with. It is dark and dark, like warm earthen caverns and the echoing cold of space. He slips, gasps, hates her for it, and bruises her hips with his fingers.

This is darkness, his antithesis, something he needs, but not something he loves. And he is brightness, living things, sun-warmed and sun-bright, and she is emptiness, shadow, the snake beneath the rock, the space between the stars, and he understands.

As they fuck and come and raze each other to the ground, the stars through the balcony curtains paint them in shades of living purple, deep and dark and rich.

II

Endymion is all pale again, with silvery embroidery and white mask; all King again. It is time for him to go home, to his Earth, and to his Kingdom, and to his wife. He is thankful for his healing powers, or else he fears he would most likely be vaporized in his sleep. He is also glad that Luna and Artemis rarely go cat anymore, as their feline noses might be a little difficult to handle.

A cool voice speaks from behind him, and he turns to take in his host, her dark hair pulled back today, to show her delicate face and hard, liquid eyes. "I hope you enjoyed your visit, my King, and have found everything to your liking." Her lips quirk.

Endymion struggles from smiling in wry amusement as well. "Of course, Lady. It was very…interesting. And you control your domain smoothly. We never doubted that."

This makes Saturn raise an eyebrow. "You did not," she says, as though she had known it all along. "Why did you come then?"

Gaze level, Endymion does not answer. She smiles her no-telling smile and her hands fly over the command board, striking keys fluidly, entering coordinates and statistics and weather circumstances. "I hope," she says, in her most enigmatic way. "That you will come visit me again. I fear I will be lonely while I readjust to no company."

"Of course," Endymion says, smiling gently. That compassion is welling up in him again. Sometimes, it is lonely being King, even when he has his Queen at his side. When she finishes and returns to his side, he holds out to her a gift, a rose of woven light, gold like his magic scepter, like his star seed crystal, and when she touches it, faint music comes out, something haunting and beautiful at once.

"For when the silence gets too loud," he says, softly.

The Lady smiles, and for a moment she is Hotaru again, and Endymion knows her dimples will haunt his dreams, because everything is different now. "Thank you." Dexterously, she wraps a slender, knotted cord around his wrist, hiding it beneath his cuff, purple cloth torn from a Saturn gown. A dark reminder.

"Take a little shadow with you, Ghost King," she says, her eyes deep and old, and Endymion can see why Pluto and Saturn had always gotten along, even when they were still Setsuna and Hotaru: they are both too old for time, burdened with wisdom beyond his knowing, and duties beyond his reckoning. He will always remember, however, when she was a little girl, and will hold tight to that thought on his darkest nights. "So that you will not forget the sun."

Endymion nods, tightly, eyes held and caught and raging against, with, entangled by hers. His hand clenches, and he feels the dark reminder shift against his wrist. Everything is different; better, hopefully; more difficult and frightening and frustrating, certainly. He misses Serenity, but relishes in this scratchy, alive sort of feeling, knowing that nothing will ever be simple again. He wonders if it was ever really simple in the first place.

"I'll be back," he says, and takes the vision of her smile with him.

II

**Fin.**


End file.
